


Cloaked in Darkness

by MarshmallowMcGonagall



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dark AU: Voldemort Wins, Deathly Hallows, HP Triad!Fest, M/M, M/M/M, Multi, Poly!Mini Fest, Polyamory, clandestine meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:35:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25282498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarshmallowMcGonagall/pseuds/MarshmallowMcGonagall
Summary: Rain thrashed against the small window panes, and only magic could have coaxed the torches outside into staying lit. The swinging wooden sign creaked and groaned with each gust of wind down the lane. Branches swayed and brushed up against the old inn, the uncomfortable thwack of leaves smacking against the window made worse by the scratch of wood against the glass that followed. The night was black to anyone who dared to lift their hood, or to look up from the Lumos needed to find a path.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom/Draco Malfoy, Neville Longbottom/Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom/Harry Potter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43
Collections: HP Triad!Fest Presents: Poly!Mini Fest





	Cloaked in Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thunder_of_Dragons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunder_of_Dragons/gifts).



> First of all, a big thank you to CheekyTorah for running the fest and for their wonderful support. To Thunder_of_Dragons, my immense gratitude and thanks for helping me get this fic finished when I wondered if it would get finished at all. And to schweet_heart, my many, many thanks for the quite tremendous and incredible beta work on this fic.
> 
> Fic is a self-prompt.

Rain thrashed against the small window panes, and only magic could have coaxed the torches outside into staying lit. The swinging wooden sign creaked and groaned with each gust of wind down the lane. Branches swayed and brushed up against the old inn, the uncomfortable thwack of leaves smacking against the window made worse by the scratch of wood against the glass that followed. The night was black to anyone who dared to lift their hood, or to look up from the Lumos needed to find a path.

Draco stepped back from the window and sat down on the edge of the bed. Elbows on his knees, he ran his hands through his hair, the blond strands tangling in his fingers. He needed to leave. He was dressed; he just needed his robes and cloak.

Harry reached out and touched Draco’s waist. Draco leapt up and walked away from the bed, only to turn around, his hands on his hips. His hair fell in his face. His breaths came in sharp inhalations, and he looked up. The firelight was all that lit the room, and the glow of flames swept around the bed until it touched Harry and Neville. Neville had propped himself up, his hand resting on Harry’s stomach, while Harry lay back, arms up on the pillow, his black hair a mess. Strands of Neville’s hair had likewise escaped the leather strap he used to tie it back, and his beard needed taming. 

“Come back to bed,” said Neville.

An hour. They had managed an hour before Draco started to get dressed, his agitation forcing him from the bed in desperate search of his things. 

The floorboards creaked beneath Draco’s slow steps as he moved towards the bed. He pushed his hair back and hesitated. Arms hanging at his sides, he sank to his knees and fell forward, his fingers spreading across the scarred wood, shoulders hunched, his head hanging low. The mattress creaked, and Harry and Neville moved to crouch down on either side of him. 

Neville’s hand rested on the back of Draco’s tall leather boots and swept slowly up towards the small of his back. Draco’s body began to heave with panicked breaths, and Neville’s hands were swift in finding his waist and pulling him close. His back against Neville’s body, Draco didn’t protest other than to close his eyes and dig his fingers into the floorboards, while Harry eased off his boots and stroked his bared legs. 

In too little time, sleep stole Draco from Harry and Neville with the ease of a practiced thief. The rumpled sheets of the inn were closer to home than any of the fine linens Draco would otherwise have found himself sleeping on, the hushed whispers of the men either side of him a lullaby he longed for but heard little more than a few notes of before his heavy lids closed, and he fell into deep slumber. 

Neville lifted the patched quilt over Draco’s shoulder and stroked the branded skin on his arm, which was held close to his body even in sleep. Harry reached across Draco to put his hand on Neville’s soft waist, ignoring the hard scars under his fingertips. In response, Neville reached across Draco to put his hand on Harry’s hip, as if the two of them could protect Draco in an embrace better than his magic which surrounded them.

Once upon a time, the mews would have been busy with horses pulling carriages through the stone arches. Iron horseshoes striking the cobbled entrance. Messengers cantering down the avenue of trees beneath the centuries-old ceiling of vaulted branches.

Tonight, with a storm raging, hunting for a way in, only one room had a fire lit. Only one room was without furniture covered in white dust sheets.

Only one, Draco had muttered to himself on the frantic night he plundered the Malfoy archives in the dungeons of the Manor. Only one, as he tore through sheaves of parchment, stopping at every sound to look over his shoulder, still hearing Harry and Neville shouting at him to leave as the chaos of battle descended around them. Only one step wrong and any of them could be dead as they fled to their different sides of the war. Draco found the inn—the parchment deeds little more than scraps—untouched for almost a hundred years, and knew it was the only choice. If they would dare take the risk again.

The wind had tried to knock him over the moment he Apparated into the courtyard of the mews. He waited to see if he had been followed, even as he knew his temporary escape would go unnoticed. Draco walked through the inn, each room subject to every spell of revelation and protection he knew, until he reached the bedroom with a moth-eaten tapestry hanging across one wall: a snake flanked by two lions. He cast the spells, then, as if under an enchantment, he crossed the room. His gloved fingers hesitated above the embroidered creatures: crowned, chained, bleeding. He fell to his knees, the dull thud of his body against the floorboards sending a cloud of dust billowing around him. He was Secret Keeper for a place that might already be useless. He sent his Patronus and waited, each beat of his heart an eternity.

The eagle found Harry and Neville, enchanted as it was to seek lovers in solitude. A footnote in an old tome was the reason Draco could still find them, time and again. To admit he was willing to risk being together again. To let them risk their lives. Choices, always choices. He chose them knowing they had already run from ruin to chance being with him. He chose knowing they were the reason he could cast his eagle, the bird soaring through air drenched with terror and surviving to reach the only people it had ever sought.

When Harry and Neville Apparated, Draco was their destination. Reconnaissance missions, false errands, following leads. Anything for hours, not even nights. Barely words between them as Draco tried to bring his lips to Neville’s and Harry’s at the same time. To kiss, to tell them to the run, to find a moment of pleasure, to beg for their safety. Their hands on his body and wards which only let them through; a place and a person, theirs alone, who had given everything and could give no more.

White cotton hung around Draco’s neck, and he stared into Neville’s blue eyes. Every time the same. Neville wrapped the cravat around Draco’s neck and tied it in place, fingers brushing his fine white shirt, then Draco pulled it loose again, eyes shining as he undid his love’s handiwork because it wasn’t right. If there was anything awry, it was a chance to question, a chance to falter. Still, he wanted to feel Neville’s fingers along the length of cotton. He wanted to believe he could still smell him once he was gone from this place. Except he eradicated every trace.

Harry eased Draco into his boots, hands smoothing the leather over Draco’s legs and tracing further up until he was standing. Green eyes met grey and Harry brushed Draco’s hair from his face before stealing a kiss. Everything was stolen. Every kiss, every touch, every hour. Stolen from the resistance and the Dark Lord. 

Harry held out his hands and Draco slipped on the black leather gloves, hesitating as his heart hammered. He brought Harry’s wrist to his mouth and pressed his lips to where blood flowed just beneath. Harry’s gloved fingers drifted to Draco’s hair as Neville slipped his hands around Draco’s waist. Neville pressed his lips to Draco’s neck and he closed his eyes.

Time stopped. Only for a moment. Only while he let himself wonder what it would be like to keep this. Each reunion gave him life and killed another part of him. To be without them would be not to live at all. His hands fell to his sides, and Harry fastened the cloak which Neville had placed around Draco’s shoulders. 

Neville held out his hands, and Draco slipped the gloves over the fingers he longed to touch. It was a longing he kept locked away, so far beneath his Occlumency shields that he would be left with only a glimmer of a memory. Draco’s features were too often that of carved stone, so practiced in maintaining the facade that it had become real. His true feelings graced his features only when he was between Harry and Neville. When they were clothed only by firelight. Hands grasping, mouths panting, pleasure surging. Harry and Neville had every night together. To have Draco for even hours was to give him everything they could, that it might see him through until they met again, and he gave himself to them always as if for the last time.

They walked to the bridge, gloved hands not touching. The temptation was too much; the need to run ever present. But the bridge was their agreement, their compromise to breathe clear air and not exist solely in hidden places. Before Draco crossed the bridge and Disapparated, they stood in the torchlight which lit the way across the water. He refused to Disapparate any closer to the inn. Any closer might leave traces of magic, and he could never know when something might be caught, might linger, might give him away. He would leave the protection he sought out for them while they Disapparated under its cover, their lives dictated by hiding, by any trace which might stay with them. No words were ever enough. To risk a kiss would be too much. Harry and Neville reached for his hands, gloves brushing against each other in the most gentle hold as Draco stepped back, then let go. He turned on his heel and strode away, his footsteps over the stone softening once against the track on the other side. They watched him disappear into the dark long before they heard the crack of Disapparition. 

As if to soothe Draco in his sleep, Neville cast a Silencing Charm over him with the hushed whisper of a lullaby. The exhaustion of war was written across all their bodies, but for Draco it seemed to be slowly drawing life from him. He tried to mitigate the worst of the regime without coming under suspicion. Too many years had passed since the Ministry had fallen, and still Draco tried. He knelt before his master, met the gaze of power won, and lied. Day after day, year after year. The resistance survived, even when they didn’t understand why. The Dark Lord’s servant remained unquestioned for his public and private ease in carrying out commands. 

“He can’t carry on like this,” said Neville.

Draco sighed in his sleep as Neville pressed his lips to Draco’s shoulder.

“We can’t hide him,” said Harry.

“What if we didn’t have to hide him?”

“He’s Marked.” Harry looked at where the glamours were fading around the dark circles under Draco’s eyes. “Our side won’t accept him, no matter what I say. Not with everything he’s done.” Harry glanced up, meeting the determined blue gaze which looked at him from behind loose strands of hair. “Neville?”

“What if it wasn’t a question of sides?” Neville’s fingers pressed into Harry’s hip, the urgency he couldn’t bring himself to voice being pressed into his lover’s body. “What if it was just us?” 

Harry found himself unable to give an answer. His head on the pillow, he watched Draco sleep and stroked Neville’s waist. It had stopped being a war of equal sides. They were a resistance who were a thorn in the side of power, but victory was an idea which had become a dream too long ago. The fire burned low while Harry and Neville drifted off to sleep. 

“I can’t keep doing this to you,” whispered Draco. 

Draco eased himself from between his lovers, much like a dream eases from slumber. Harry and Neville both frowned in their sleep, stretching and sighing heavily under the wandless enchantment Draco cast when he stirred. It wouldn’t give him long, but he couldn’t compromise them for longer.

He pulled his hood up and strode through puddles which splashed against his boots, the wind stirring up his cloak so that it flowed behind him like a spectre. The avenue of trees which arched above him kept out what moonlight fought its way through the clouds. Rain lashed his cheeks, but to look down was to avoid what might be ahead.

The blue glow preceded the lion and the stag, and the Patronuses flanked him for a time before they charged in front. He walked through them, the guardians dissipating, then he stopped. He didn’t look back, but listened to the boots plunging through puddles and smacking against the track.

“We walk to the bridge,” said Neville, his voice harsh as he caught his breath and contained his fury, his anger, his desire for it all to be different.

Draco looked down, and his hood fell forward, covering his face.

“Someone could have seen your Patronuses,” murmured Draco.

“Is your faith in yourself so bad?” asked Harry. “You warded the inn and the grounds to within an inch of your life.” He reached beneath the hood, his gloved fingers finding Draco’s chin and lifting his head to look at him. “You warded it with your life, Draco.” Harry’s fingers stroked the pale cheek while a glint in Draco’s grey eyes begged for an answer. “How could you think we didn’t know?”

Draco grabbed Harry’s arm to pull him away and tried to push past Neville. Neville’s arm swept around Draco’s waist and elicited from him an agonised cry. Draco’s hands found Neville’s face, his fingers brushing the wild beard, his lips finding the ones which he longed for, except for—

Draco reached back without looking and grabbed Harry, who was already waiting.

Harry pulled down Draco’s hood and pressed his lips to the back of Draco’s neck. Harry’s hands gripped Draco’s hips, and he breathed heavily, wondering how Draco would return. Would suspicions have been raised? Would his Occlumency hold? Years of Neville against him each night, the whispered words, “Do you think he’s alive?” The desperate wondering of what alive might mean.

The wards were strong, and still this was wrong. Too much compromised out in the open. Too much at risk of being uncovered. Every day unearthed more Light Magic being twisted through a prism until it bent to the Dark Lord’s will. 

“We walk to the bridge,” said Neville, stiffly. 

“We agreed,” said Harry. He pressed his lips again to Draco’s neck, inhaling the scent of woodsmoke which Draco would rid himself of before Disapparating. “We walk to the bridge.”

Rain streamed over Draco’s head, his hair sticking to his face. The cold night air intermingled with their panted breaths as he pulled away from Neville and turned to Harry, who found Draco’s mouth without pausing.

Hands running through Draco’s damp hair, Harry held back only until Draco deepened the kiss. His hood fell and Draco's gloved thumb slid beneath Harry’s jaw until his fingers were around the back of his neck and brushing the soft black hair.

Draco’s other hand found Neville’s, and their grasp on each other was so tight that they might have been about to Disapparate together. Neville reached around to hold Draco’s belt, as if he could anchor his lover to the moment they were in.

They clung to each other as they tried to hold themselves together. The bitter knowledge that one of them was to leave. To return in dreams. Rain on skin, lips on lips, hands on hips, and breaths which fell into panted gasps, when to speak was to admit in catching words the wondering of whether or not this moment would happen again. 

In the distance, there was a rumble of thunder. Draco froze, and Neville pressed his hand against Draco’s taut body. His head darted up from Harry to look along the track, flinging drops of rain as he looked frantically for what might be the end.

Harry caught Neville’s gaze when a crack of lightning illuminated their hallowed space beneath the vaulted branches. Neville nodded, and Harry pulled up Draco’s hood before pulling up his own. Neville started walking, and his loves fell into step with him. Not touching, though fingers twitched to reach out and grasp hands that might not let go.

The stone bridge appeared as though it had been carved by nature. The track edged towards the river bank and formed a curve above the water before meeting the path on the other side. Torches were in brackets above the abutments on both sides of the bridge, the orange flames flickering in the downpour but refusing to be extinguished. Droplets of orange light slid down the low, moss-covered walls flanking the footway, which had allowed only the most adventurous carriage drivers in centuries past. The river might caress the edges of the arch on slow summer days, but as the storm strengthened, the river was swelling more with each passing minute and crashing against the stone.

When Draco stepped forward onto the stones, the torches were extinguished. The suggestion of a hooded figure appeared in the middle of the bridge. The torches burst into flame again, only the fire was blue and didn’t flicker against the rain. There was instead a glow which illuminated with too great a strength for the size of the fire which burned. Fingers flexed around wands, but none drew to cast even a Lumos charm. The light afforded them by the torches showed all they needed to see: the night woven into robes and a cloak. The hood pulled too low, the sleeves not low enough. A trick of childhood or illustration from a tome, nothing could ever have prepared them for the sight of bones strung together by no visible magic and a finger curling to invite the lovers forward.

They had all long since learned there were some invitations not to be declined. It was nonetheless Draco who took the first step.

“The one who has gone to the darkness,” said Death, as the lovers approached. “The one who has been marked by darkness, and the one who has been haunted by darkness.”

Draco stopped, Harry and Neville either side of him.

“You would cross this bridge once more and return to the master who fears me?” asked Death. “The master for whom you have long sacrificed the fates of others, that fate which ought to have been yours?”

"He didn't have a choice," said Harry. 

“Don’t,” said Draco, staring at where the robes and cloak pooled in darkness before them. It was an old argument, and he almost wanted to laugh. 

“You didn't,” said Harry.

“And if I gave him choice?” asked Death

“He would have us by his side this time,” said Neville, reaching for Draco's hand so he could press his lips to the back of Draco’s glove.

Harry squeezed Draco's other hand.

Draco saw the glow on the ground, and looking up, saw a wand in the extended hand.

“It is yours,” said Death. “Take it and make your choices.”

Draco let go of Harry and reached out, his fingers drawn to the length of wood and wrapping around the wand. 

“He’s trying to end this—this darkness,” said Harry.

Magic flowed through Draco’s hand, as if he had plunged his arm into the river below. A moment of feeling as if he might be swept away, then the tug of Neville’s hand around his was enough to bring him back, to keep him from going under.

“The darkness he gave himself to,” said Death.

Then Draco lunged forward, but Neville grabbed him around the waist and Harry stepped in front of him. Harry looked over Draco’s shoulder and saw Neville in the glow of the blue flames as Draco, breathing haggardly, began to break apart. The fractures were invisible to Death, but like chasms to his lovers.

“You walk with this darkness?” asked Death.

“Willingly,” said Harry, resting his forehead against Draco’s.

“And the one who holds him?”

“Willingly,” said Neville.

“Do you want your wand back already?” sneered Draco, though his voice caught. He could feel a thrumming. The torrent of the river, the power of destruction within his grasp.

“It is a gift,” said Death, simply. “And so to the marked one I give a gift, too.”

Harry was slow to turn around, his hands on Draco’s arms as he looked towards the figure. Where there should have been a face, there was only a hood, with a darkness beneath it that rendered it impossible to remember when he had last seen daylight.

Atop two hands of bone, Death held out a cloak like water contained without a barrier, fine as silk and little heavier than air. Harry reached for the cloak of invisibility. He had owned one once, an heirloom, nowhere near as exquisite as the cloth which poured into his hands, and an easy sacrifice amidst the chaos of war.

Draco and Neville looked on, their bodies against each other, their gazes fixed on Harry.

Harry looked at Death as the fabric slipped between his fingers. He grasped the cloak more firmly and felt it still, as though recognising a new master. Though he could see no face, he knew he was being watched. He rubbed his thumbs across the magic woven into clandestine possibilities. As if he held the river in his hands, the cloak flowed into a pocket within his robes, and he knew the magic would answer to him.

“And so one remains,” said Death. “The one not marked in any way but haunted.”

Death’s hand was extended, and the fingers unfurled. There was a glow as a small black stone, nothing more than a rough river pebble hung in the air above the outstretched bones. 

Neville’s hold on Draco loosened, and Draco’s hand found his.

“They stand with you?” asked Death.

“Always,” said Draco and Harry.

Whether the rushing in Neville’s ears came from his pounding heart or the river below, he didn't know.

“Even when they learn what you’ve kept from them?” The hand was extended further. “One day you may realise this is a gift.”

Neville held out his hand, and as the stone hit his palm, it was as if it were a boulder and not a pebble, and he fell to his knees.

“No!” bellowed Draco and Harry.

“I bid you goodnight,” said Death, and the torches went out.

The orange flames erupted and burned high and fierce. The bridge ahead of them was clear.

Draco's hand grasped frantically to run fingers through Neville's hair, and he stood at Neville’s side, head darting around before lowering his wand.

“Bellatrix Lestrange finished what she started,” said Neville. It didn’t matter that the rain masked his tears; his gasping breaths betrayed him.

“What?” said Draco.

“How?” said Harry.

“I’ve been sneaking in to see them,” said Neville.

“It wasn’t an ambush, was it,” said Harry.

“No,” choked out Neville.

“You were there?” hissed Draco.

The news wasn’t in the Daily Prophet, and he had tried to toss aside the stab of pain when he heard Bellatrix boasting of the Longbottoms’ demise. It was inevitable. He assumed the skirmish which followed was her impulse control failing once again. He never imagined—

“I escaped,” said Neville, standing up.

“Barely,” said Harry, getting to his feet and taking Neville’s face in his hands. The face he had kissed over long nights of not enough potions while wounds healed. Over long nights of knowing something was wrong, but never what.

“You know what they would have done to you,” said Draco, in disbelief. 

Neville looked at the glowing forms he realised only he could see, the same glow as the blue flames, as he heard the words only he could hear. Draco and Harry followed his gaze to stare into the black of night and Neville slipped the stone in his pocket.

They were meant to be saying goodbye. 

Draco was meant to cross the bridge. 

Neville stared at the darkness where the glowing forms had been. He turned the stone in his pocket, fingers glancing off the sharp edges which the river longed to soften. The blue forms appeared again, close enough to touch, but for Draco and Harry beside him. The stone tumbled from his grasp back into the pocket, and he looked at Draco, who was staring at the other side of the bridge. 

He was meant to cross over.

He was meant to leave.

“Don’t go,” said Neville.

“Feeling sentimental?” said Draco, his voice catching.

Neville murmured Draco’s name and Draco screwed up his eyes, biting his lip. 

“If I don’t return, I will have signed my own death warrant, and if I do—” He drew in a great shuddering breath.

He had been the one to give the command. He had been the one who put ink to parchment. An honour he’d accepted. A sign of his master’s faith in him. He was to hunt them down and drag them from their lairs. He was to get close but never close enough, because those under his command were hounds already loose and baying for blood. He had witnessed hunts. He had led hunts. He had risen through the ranks to protect them. 

“Then we end this,” said Harry.

“What?” said Draco, panic surging through him like a poison.

“No,” pleaded Neville, staring at Harry.

“Not us,” said Harry, quietly. “We end what’s keeping us apart.”

Harry cast his stag. The beast pawed at the stone and stared down Draco and Neville. Neville’s lion joined it, and with power surging through his body, Draco wielded his gift for the first time in years and cast his eagle. His Patronus seemed to imbue the stag and lion with a greater glow, and the three men stood in the middle of the stone bridge, a magic surrounding them that made the lands quiet for a brief moment before the river surged forward again, and the winds blew, and rain thrashed.

“These—these gifts are meant to be together,” said Harry. “We could be together.”

“We could be safe,” said Neville.

“We would have power,” said Draco. “Do you know what that could mean?”

Neville's lips were on Draco's, Harry's hand in Draco's hair, and Draco turned to find Harry's mouth as Neville's heavy breaths came against his neck.

Years of promises in each kiss. Years of desperation giving way to the possibility of never parting again.

“There will be no turning back,” said Draco, before closing his eyes.

“We love you,” said Harry.

“You know we do,” said Neville.

Instead of warnings, it was rain that hit Draco’s face and fell from his lips. “I love you, too.”

Draco opened his eyes and the three Patronuses faded, the remnants of the eagle, lion, and stag swept away in the gale.

The three lovers walked back to the inn, their cloaks flowing behind them like the river Draco hadn’t crossed, a darkness in their wake as they returned to what they had been dreaming of.


End file.
